Gramos -Stronghold held by Macedonians during Civil War

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • Makedonetz
    Senior Member
    • Apr 2010
    • 1080

    Gramos -Stronghold held by Macedonians during Civil War

    My Mothers cousins held gramos during the civil war till Tito shut the borders. Found some archives on this time.

    From Gramos Mountain towards Lower Schleszia: Refugees from the Greek Civil War in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

    Key words:

    refugees, civil war, conservatives, partisans, Diaspora, perpetual trauma

    Abstract:

    The civil war that took place during the period 946 to 1949, which was fought between the pro-western royalists and the communist republicans in Greece, the former supported by Great Britain and the US, the latter supported by Tito’s Yugoslavia, and, indirectly, by Stalin’s Soviet Union, marks simultaneously the end of the “Oriental issue” and “the beginning of the Cold War” (Dan Diner). This modern partisan low intensity warfare, which was primarily waged in the northwestern part of the country, also called Aegean Macedonia, resulted in about 100,000 human casualties, while about one million people were forced to leave their homes, most of them forever. The war ended in the same way it began – with an impulse from abroad: Yugoslavia, which was placed in isolation due to the breakup between Tito and Stalin in 1948, ceased its active support to the Communist Party in the Civil War, and in June 1949 closed its border towards Greece – the “Democratic Army of Greece” (DAG) of the partisans found itself in an unfavorable war position, and had to save itself by fleeing to Albania in August 1949.


    This civil war, based largely on differences in ideology between the conservatives and partisans, also had a strong ethno-political dimension: half of the post-communist partisans and a large part of their supporters and helpers in the northwestern part of the country were not Greeks in the ethnic sense of the word, but southern Slavs who mainly presented themselves as Bulgarians until 1944, and then as Macedonians. While the communists were in favor of multiethnic and secular Greece, and, in the beginning of 1949, were striving for secession of Northern Macedonia and its annexation to a united Macedonia, the royalists defined the Kingdom as a homogenous and Christian-Orthodox national state of the Greeks in which “the Slavo-phonic Hellenics” were hardly even tolerated.

    Migration waves, induced by the Civil War, were unusually numerous and various, and were clearly distinguished from the mass expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe which took place at the same time:

    1. At the very beginning of the war, in March 1946, the residents of the northwestern administrative area of Greece fled from the war zone. Most of them populated the large port towns in the country; among them were many people from Anadoly and who had just moved in the region as part of the Greek-Turkish exchange of population. Simultaneously, in this first phase of the war, many young men as well as women moved from the valleys in the north-western part in the mountainous region that was under DAG’s control. This also includes the beginning of the migration wave from Northern Greece to Yugoslavia, where the small town of Bukles, in the north of Serbia, was picked as a central shelter back in 1945.

    2. In the autumn of 1947 the army, loyal to the king, began a wide-ranging action towards clearing the northwestern part of the country where there were about 700,000 forcefully displaced persons.

    3. In 1948, the two conflicting sides evacuated children and young persons from the territories they had conquered in the northwestern part of the country. The royalists transferred up to 30,000 children to the south of the country, and the communists sent about 25,000 children across the border to Yugoslavia where they were primarily accommodated in shelters in several Yugoslav republics. In the period afterwards, they were most frequently sent to the so-called countries with popular democracies – Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as in the Democratic Republic of Germany. Each of the conflicting parties accused the other that it deported these children against both their will and that of their parents, i.e. relatives. The two sides were also accusing each other that the other side was doing this in order to perform an ethno-national transformation – i.e. “to turn the Macedonians into Greeks” and vice versa.

    4. Since the middle of 1948, when the Yugoslav support for DAG started to wane and the royalists had intensively been conquering territories, part of the civilian population in the remaining regions controlled by the communists crossed the border into Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, and partly into Albania. Most of these refugees were accommodated in camps in the Yugoslav republics. The above-mentioned camp Bukles in Vojvodina was then transformed into a true “town of refugees”. It is thought it housed 50,000 refugees.

    5. In the summer of 1949, most of the DAG members fled to Albania, with some heading to Bulgaria. The officers’ corps was urgently transferred, with ships, to the Soviet ports on the Black Sea, thence to the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. The army and the non-commissioned officers had to remain on the Albanian coast until 1950.

    6. In 1950, the refugees from the Civil War, who lived in the Yugoslav camps, were sent to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as to the DR Germany and the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan – frequently enduring forceful separation of their families. In the same year, the DAG partisans from Albania were transferred to the countries with popular democracy. From1950 on, there were about 100,000 civilian refugees from the Civil War in the whole territory under Soviet domination. A large number of the refugees, about 30,000, were placed in the Soviet Union, mainly in Tashkent. About 2,000 lived in the DR Germany, mainly in Radeboil and Dresden, while almost 70,000, half of them Macedonians, lived in the countries with popular democracy, for the most part Czechoslovakia and Poland. Most of the refugees were concentrated in the historical Schlesia, that is, the region on both sides of the new Polish-Czechoslovak border, the Polish territorial belt west of the Odra River, near Pulitz, Moravia with Brno, Budapest and its surrounding area and the refugee town of Belonjanis in Pusta, renowned for the killed Greek partisan hero Nikos Belojanis.

    7. In 1950, the first, weak wave of re-emigration took place: about 800 children from Yugoslavia and about 150 from Czechoslovakia were sent back to their Greek motherland. This tendency, however, did not continue in the following years.

    8. From the beginning of the 1950s, the merging of families started taking place, an activity organised partly by the state and partly by the refugees themselves. In this way, for instance, several thousand Greeks and Macedonians moved to Poland and Uzbekistan.

    9. In the 1950s, a small number of the refugees from the Civil War left Eastern Europe and Central Asia for Australia and North America.

    10. In the 1960s, some of the Macedonian refugees in Uzbekistan and the countries with popular democracy accepted the offer from the Yugoslav Government and moved to SR Macedonia. Flats and jobs were given to them here, mostly in Tetovo and Gostivar, towns with a predominantly Albanian population.

    11. During the 1970s, during Brant’s policy towards the East, a part of the 2,000 refugees in the DR Germany were allowed to move to the FR Germany; for the most part it was the orphans who remained.

    12. After the end of the dictatorship in Greece in 1974, a small number of the Greek refugees had the opportunity to re-immigrate to Greece.

    13. The socialist government of PASOK, elected in 1981, gave amnesty to many persons in Athens, mostly those convicted “in absentiam”, and the expelled refugees from the Civil War, which caused a large wave of re-immigration. By 1983, about 40,000 persons had returned to Greece from Central Asia and from the countries with popular democracy, almost all of them Greeks; however, no Macedonians returned. Their property, confiscated by the state after 1949, was given back to them in a small number of cases, but in most of the cases this was not so.

    14. This re-immigration continued in the 1980s: it is thought that by 1987, about 20,000 refugees from the Civil War had returned, people who had lived in the Soviet Union and in the countries with popular democracy, and its intensity of transit increased in the 1990s. For example, in Uzbekistan, where in 1979 Greeks numbered 14,025, by 1989 their number had decreased to 10,454, and by 1999 this number was only 1,625. In 1991, just 3,400 Greeks, i.e. Macedonians who described themselves as Greeks, lived in Czechoslovakia, while their number in 1983 had been around 10,000, and in 1975 as high as 13,500. At the present moment, the number of Greeks and Macedonians in Poland is thought to be about 5,000 (1975 and 1983: 9,000), and the number of these people in Hungary is estimated to be about 1,000 (1975: 4,800; 1983: 2,780). There are no data regarding the present figures about the number of refugees in Bulgaria (1975: 6,800; 1983: 4,000) and Romania (1975: 5,600; 1983: 3,500). There are no data in Yugoslavia either about these people, who, due to their origin from Aegean Macedonia, call themselves “Aegeans”, because they are registered along with the “domestic” Macedonians. The same goes for the Republic of Macedonia, which has been independent since 1991.

    It is certain that at the present moment, there are about 15,000 persons outside Greece, i.e. outside the wider region of Macedonia, who belong to the first generation of expelled people from the Civil War, as well as their children and grandchildren, and that they will most probably remain there in future. The main reason for this is the high degree of social integration, accompanied by adequate status that the refugees from the Civil War enjoy, primarily in the societies in Central and Eastern Europe. Most of them arrived in the new industrial centres of the countries with popular democracy as illiterate farmers and shepherds and, making constant and ambitious use of the broad offers for education in the host countries, are included these days in jobs requiring technical knowledge, above all. As regards the Macedonian side of the refugees, the closeness of their language with the Slav languages in Southeastern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe and the USSR was especially useful. Despite this, in 1949, this very group was unfoundedly accused for “titoism’ and discriminated for years. Thus, the Macedonians used their initial advantage, expressed through the image of “good stalinists”, which was enjoyed initially by the Greeks and Macedonians in the eyes of the party leadership in the countries with popular democracy. Due to these circumstances, the Macedonians temporarily regressed, and eventually progressed in the period of de-stalinization. They never managed, however, to get rid of the political custody imposed on them by the Greek refugees. Namely, the parties and institutions in the host countries considered the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in Exile as their main interlocutor representing all the civilian refugees, although only Greeks, and not Macedonians, were part of the leadership of this party. In this context, we should mention the situation where the pro-Macedonian branch of the KKE, represented by its Secretary General, Nikos Zaharijadis, during his mandate from 1931 to 1956 was rejected as a “Stalinist relic” during the intra-party de-stalinization.

    The above-mentioned 15,000 Greeks and Macedonians in Central and Eastern Europe, viewed from an external perspective, are an integrated social group, which, nevertheless, viewed from an internal perspective, are a self-contained cosmos. Proof of this is the trans-national model for getting married within the group, which can be encountered in the second generation, according to which “a Hungarian” Macedonian cannot marry a Hungarian, but a “Polish” or a “Moravian” Macedonian, who is usually chosen for him via family networks which surpass the state borders. Another, and a more concealed indicator for this is the “secondary” causing of trauma of the second and the third generation of refugees – trauma caused by the parents and grandparents, which is frequently confirmed by the negative experience of the family members when they return to Greece. In the case of the Macedonians, we should add here the perpetual trauma, reflected in the conviction that the Greeks are not only the “people who banished them”, but later on, for decades, also “the people who enslaved them” – this refers to the officials of KKE in the countries with popular democracy and in the USSR.

    Due to this negative picture, it is little surprise that the image of the host country is very positive: in the period prior to and after 1989, according to the refugees, the societies of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary are qualified as “European”, “civilized”, “educated”, “rich” and “modern”. Living standards, good career opportunities, social insurance, possibilities for participation in all areas of public life and the degree of emancipation are highly assessed. In the period before 1989, there was another positive aspect as well, linked to the limitations for travelling abroad, which referred to the majority population, but not for the refugees from the Civil War, who were mainly persons without citizenship, and who could be engaged in additional work such as trans-border small trade within the whole territory of the Council for Mutual Economic Help.

    In order to shed more light on this harmonious and almost symbiotic coexistence between the refugees from the Civil War and the majority population in Southeastern, Western and Northwestern Poland, the Moravia part of Czechoslovakia, and in the vicinity of the Hungarian capital Budapest, we should mention that the two groups of peoples arrived almost simultaneously in the above-mentioned, formerly totally ethnically pure regions, i.e. the two populations had an almost identical “zero hour”. The reason for this is certainly not a coincidence, but planned by the state: there was sufficient space for the refugees and a need for human resources only where the Jewish population was killed and the Germans were expelled. In the case of Poland, there was an additional argument: until the Polish authorities became certain where the new border with the west would be placed, they had been redirecting the wave of refugees from the Civil War, who arrived in the country mainly by ship through the Gdingen port, towards the Polish territories, at that time ruled by the Soviet Union: Pulitz, west from the Odra River, and Zgorzeletz, east from the Nisa River. This, according to the Polish side, had two parallel advantages: on the one hand, the Soviet military administration in Germany had to take care of the accommodation and food for the refugees, and, on the other hand, in the case of giving these territories to the DR Germany, the refugee problem would have been resolved. These concentrations of refugees were disbanded when the Odra-Nisa border gained international-legal recognition, and Pulitz and Zgorzelec remained within Poland. This explains why, above all, Schlesia became a populating centre. The case of the Bieszczady mountain, in the southeast of the new Poland, demonstrates a certain parallel with this situation, although incomparable in degree. Namely, several hundred Greek miners were given new homes in the village of Kroscienko and the surrounding areas, which had previously, during the action in Visla in 1947, been cleared of Ukrainians.

    The Diaspora of refugees from the Greek Civil War in Central and Eastern Europe these days is a special period in the history of the Cold War, which so far has not been largely covered from a political aspect. The first beginnings of this are the congresses, held every 10 years by the Association of the Children-Refugees from the Aegean Part of Macedonia, established in the Macedonian city of Bitola, a body which has a very small impact in Central and Eastern Europe, and none in Greece. A precondition for this to happen may be the forthcoming admission of the Central and Eastern European countries, which accepted refugees in the European Union, whose member state is Greece.

    Bibliography to the top

    B?rentzen, Lars: The „Paidomazoma“ and the Queen’s Camps. In: Lars B?rentzen, John O. Iatrides, Ole L. Smith (Eds.): Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War 1945-1949. Copenhagen 1987, S. 127-157.

    Barcikowski, Wladyslaw: Szpital grecki na wyspie Wolin. Szczecin 1989.

    Barker, Elisabeth: The Yugoslavs and the Greek Civil ,War of 1946-1949. In: Lars B?rentzen, John O. Iatrides, Ole L. Smith (Eds.): Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War 1945-1949. Copenhagen 1987, S. 297-308.

    Biernacka, Maria: Greek Refugees in the Bieszczady Mountains. Processes of Adaption and Integration. In: Ethnologia Polonica 7 (1981), S. 35-45.

    Biernacka, Maria: Osady uchodzcow greckich w Bieszczadach. In: Etnografia Polska 17 (1973), H. 1, S. 83-93.

    Boeschoten, Riki van: The Impossible Return: Coping with Separation and the Reconstruction of Memory in the Wake of the Civil War. In: Mark Mazower (Ed.): After the War Was Over: Reconstruction the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943-1960. Princeton, NJ, 2000, S. 122-144.

    Botu, Antula: Recka etnicka skupina v Ceskoslovensku. In: Cesky lid 69 (1982), H. 1, S. 47-50.

    Brown, Keith S.: Macedonia’s Child-Grandfathers: The Transnational Politics of Memory, Exile and Return 1948-1998. Washington 2003 (= Donald W. Treadgold Papers series, No. 37: University of Washington).

    Dorovsky, Ivan: Jeste to neni minulost. Ctyricet let od evakuace deti z Recka. In: Sbornik praci filozoficke fakulty Brnenske univerzity 37. Rada historicka (C ) c. 35. Brno 1988, S. 17-32.

    Dorovsky, Ivan: Pro nas to neni minulost. In: Dorovsky, Ivan: Ve snu se stale vracim domu. Brno 1993, S. 3-16.

    Georgievski, Kuzman. Eden neobjaven dokument-spisok na makedonski deca koi se naog‘aat vo Istocno-evropskite zemji. In: Istorija 22 (1986) H. 2, S. 301-323.

    Georgievski, Kuzman: Isseluvanjeto i zgrizuvanjeto na decata-begalci od egejskiot del na Makedonija vo vremeto na grag‘anskata vojna (1946*1949 godina). In: Istorija 22 (1986), H. 1, S. 141*157.

    Hofman-Liandzis, Krystyna, Kazimierz Pudlo: Z badan nad kultura ludowa emigrantow greckich na Dolnym Slasku. In: Zeszyty Etnograficzne. Wroclaw 1963, H. 1, S. 148-160.

    Hradecny, Pavel: Die griechische Diaspora in der Tschechischen Republik: Die Entstehung und Anfangsentwicklung 1948-1956. In: Evangelos Konstantinou (Hrsg.): Griechische Migration in Europa. Geschichte und Gegenwart. Frankfurt/M. u. a. 2000, S. 95-117.

    Hradecny, Pavel: Recka komunita v Ceskoslovensku. Jeji vznik a pocatecni vyvoj (1948–1954). Praha 2000 (= Studijni materialy Ustavu pro soudobe dejiny AV CR, svazek 6).

    Iatrides, John O.: Civil War, 1945-1949. National and International Aspects. In: John O. Iatrides (Ed.): Greece in the 1940s: A Nation in Crisis. Hanover, NH, 1981, S. 195-219 + 385-392.

    Jackson, Marvin R.: Changes in Ethnic Populations of Southeastern Europe: Holocaust, Migration and Assimilation – 1940 to 1970. In: Roland Schonfeld (Hrsg.): Nationalitatenprobleme in Sudosteuropa. Munchen 1987, S. 72-104.

    Jones, Howard: The Diplomacy of Restraint: The United States Efforts to Repatriate Greek Children Evacuated during the Civil War of 1946-49. In: Journal of Modern Greek Studies 3 (1985), May, S. 65-85.

    Jossifidis, Alexander: Beloiannisz. In: Thetis. Mannheimer Beitrage zur Klassischen Archaologie und Geschichte Griechenlands und Zyperns 9 (2002), S. 197-199.

    Kirjazovski, Risto: Makedonskata politicka emigracija od Egejskiot del na Makedonija vo Iztocnoevropskite zemji po Vtorata svetska vojna. Skopje 1989.

    Knopek, Jacek: O osadnictwie Grekow i Macedonczykow na Ziemiach Odzyskanych po II wojnie swiatowej. In: Andrzej Chodubski (Hrsg.): Przemiany spoleczne, kwestie narodowosciowe i polonijne. Torun 1994, S. 145-152.

    Kolbe, Kica B. Egejci. Skopje 1999.

    Konecny, Karel: Recke a makedonske deti v Sobotine. In: Severni Morava. Vlastivedny sbornik, svazek 74, Sumperk 1997, S. 45-58.

    Lagani, Irina: To „paidomazoma“ kai ellinojugoslavikes schesis 1949-1953. Athina 1996.

    Makris, Praxiteles: Deti vydedencu. Ostrava 1986.

    Martinova-Buckova, Fana: I nie sme deca na majkata zemja ... Skopje 1998.

    Maryanski, Andrzej: Mniejszosc grecka w wojewodstwie Rzeszowskim. In: Czasopismo geograficzne 33 (1962), H. 3., S. 362-363.

    Minkov, Lazar: Makedonskata emigracija od Egejskiot del na Makedonija vo Ungarija. Skopje 2000.

    Monova, Miladina: De l’historicite a l’ethnicite: Les Egeens ou ces autres Macedoniens. In: Balkanologie 5 (2001), S. 179-197.

    Nakovski, Petre: Makedonski deca vo Polska (1948-1968) (Politoloska studija). Skopje 1987.

    Otcenasek, Jaroslav: In: Recka narodnostni mensina v Ceske republice dnes. In: Cesky lid 85 (1998), H. 2, S. 147-159.

    Pudlo, Kazimierz: Grecy i makedonczycy w Polsce 1948-1993. Imigracja, prezmiany i zanikanie grupy. In: Sprawy Narodowosciowe 4 (1995), H. 1 (6), S. 133-151.

    Pudlo, Kazimierz: Nekoi refleksi za prestojot na decata od Egejska Makedonija vo Polska (1948-1968). In: Glasnik na Institutot za nacionalna istorija 30 (1986), H. 1-2, S. 193-209.

    Pudlo, Kazimierz: Uchodzcy polityczni z Grecji w Polsce (1948-1995). In: Zbigniew Kurcz (Hrsg.): Mniejszosci narodowe w Polsce. Wroclaw 1997, S. 149-152.

    Ristovic, Milan: A Long Journey Home: Greek Refugee Children in Yugoslavia 1948–1960. Thessaloniki 2000.

    Ristovic, Milan: Dugi povratak kuci. Deca izbeglice iz Grcke u Jugoslaviji 1948-1960. Beograd 1998.

    Robovski, Nikifor: Makedoncite od Egejskiot del na Makedonija vo Cehoslovakija. Skopje 1988.

    Rossos, Andrew: Incompatible Allies: Greek Communism and Macedonian Nationalism in the Civil War in Greece, 1943-1949. In: Journal of Modern History 69 (1997), S. 42-76.

    Ruwe, Gerrit: Griechische Burgerkriegsfluchtlinge. Vertreibung und Ruckkehr. Munster 1990.

    Tanaskova, Fidanka (Hrsg.): Den na razdelenite. Prva svetska sredba na decata begalci od Egejskiot del na Makedonija, Skopje, 1948-1988. Skopje 1993.

    Terzudis, Christos: Trzydziestolecie pobytu w Polsce uchodzcow politycznych z Grecji i dzialalnosc ich Zwiazku im. Nikosa Belojannisa (Wybrane problemy). In: Rocznik Dolnoslaski 7 (1981), S. 231-251.

    Tsironis, Petros: Deti Hellady. Plzen 1976.

    Voutira, Eftihia, Aigli Brouskou: „Borrowed Children“ in the Greek Civil War. In: Catharine Panter-Brick, Malcolm T. Smith (Eds.): Abandoned Children. Cambridge 1998, S. 92-110.

    Wojecki, Mieczyslaw: Grecy w Polsce Ludowej. Greeks among the population of People’s Poland. In: Przeglad Geograficzny 47 (1975), H. 4, S. 763-768.

    Wojecki, Mieczyslaw: Ludnosc grecko-macedonska na Dolnym Slasku. In: Sobotka. Slaski kwartalnik historyczny 1980, H. 1, S. 83-96.

    Wojecki, Mieczyslaw: Ludnosc grecko-macedonska w Polsce. In: Czasopismo geograficzne 46 (1975), H. 3, S. 313-314.

    Wojecki, Mieczyslaw: Osadnictwo ludnosci greckiej na Ziemi Lubuskiej. In: Przeglad Lubuski 7 (1977), H. 2, S. 22-31.

    Wojecki, Mieczyslaw: Uchodzcy polityczni z Grecji w Polsce 1948-1975. Jelenia Gora 1989.



    Translation: Kalina Maleska

    Last edited by Makedonetz; 09-07-2010, 05:23 PM.
    Makedoncite se borat
    za svoite pravdini!

    "The one who works for joining of Macedonia to Bulgaria,Greece or Serbia can consider himself as a good Bulgarian, Greek or Serb, but not a good Macedonian"
    - Goce Delchev
  • Pelister
    Senior Member
    • Sep 2008
    • 2742

    #2
    Makedonetz, do you know who wrote the article?
    Last edited by Pelister; 09-07-2010, 07:24 PM.

    Comment

    • Makedonetz
      Senior Member
      • Apr 2010
      • 1080

      #3
      Stephan trouest

      i belive the guy is in the link pelister
      eek
      Its interesting because my father was sent to a orphanage with his friends from Mala Prespa to Czech rep in the Morava district. My dad said their was alot of greek boys expelled aswell and they all lived in harmony where each other didnt degrade one another for being Macedonian & Greek which those greeks who were there along with my father reconized we are macedonian.
      Last edited by Makedonetz; 09-07-2010, 08:20 PM.
      Makedoncite se borat
      za svoite pravdini!

      "The one who works for joining of Macedonia to Bulgaria,Greece or Serbia can consider himself as a good Bulgarian, Greek or Serb, but not a good Macedonian"
      - Goce Delchev

      Comment

      • Pelister
        Senior Member
        • Sep 2008
        • 2742

        #4
        Thanks.

        This civil war, based largely on differences in ideology between the conservatives and partisans, also had a strong ethno-political dimension: half of the post-communist partisans and a large part of their supporters and helpers in the northwestern part of the country were not Greeks in the ethnic sense of the word, but southern Slavs who mainly presented themselves as Bulgarians until 1944, and then as Macedonians. While the communists were in favor of multiethnic and secular Greece, and, in the beginning of 1949, were striving for secession of Northern Macedonia and its annexation to a united Macedonia, the royalists defined the Kingdom as a homogenous and Christian-Orthodox national state of the Greeks in which “the Slavo-phonic Hellenics” were hardly even tolerated.
        This line of his is a complete fabrication and a stupid piece of propoganda, all the archival evidence over the last one and half centuries defies such a proposition. I think that if we can get passed the misrepresentations, and colonialism's that have obviously made their way into his work, there is some good information here.
        Last edited by Pelister; 09-07-2010, 10:11 PM.

        Comment

        • Makedonetz
          Senior Member
          • Apr 2010
          • 1080

          #5
          I agree pelister, some of his information is not 100% correct but at the same time some of the information shows truth. But at that period in time weren;t the macedonians promised freedom from Bulgarians, greeks and turks aswell? Not agreeing with his article just inquiring.
          Makedoncite se borat
          za svoite pravdini!

          "The one who works for joining of Macedonia to Bulgaria,Greece or Serbia can consider himself as a good Bulgarian, Greek or Serb, but not a good Macedonian"
          - Goce Delchev

          Comment

          • Makedonetz
            Senior Member
            • Apr 2010
            • 1080

            #6
            More information......

            Georgi Donevski was born in the village Bapchor, Kostursko located about twenty-nine kilometers from Mount Vicho in Aegean Macedonia. Georgi was only twelve years old in 1948, at the height of the Greek Civil War, when he along with two-hundred and seventy other children from Bapchor were uprooted from their homes and sent away to foreign lands. Georgi left late in April, 1948 with the last of fourteen groups that left Bapchor.

            The children left their homes during the height of aerial bombardments and traveled in the night, through rough mountainous terrain across the Greek-Yugoslav border past Prespa into Yugoslavia.

            The second international refugee meeting took place in 1998, ten years after the first. The third meeting took place in 2003. Georgi hopes that from now on they will organize annual events and picnics to be held inside Greece in such places as Mounts Gramos, Vicho and Malimadi as well as in the Macedonian cities of Voden, Drama, Kostur, Lerin and every other place where refugee children come from.

            With tears in their eyes and hopes of a quick return, many Macedonian villages were emptied of their children, sent to various Eastern Block countries. Unfortunately their wishes to return, even after fifty-seven years, have yet to be fulfilled.

            While many children were sent to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, etc., Georgi was sent to Zagreb, Croatia. He was first sent to Tsrkvenitsa and later to Samogor. In 1952 he left Samogor for Skopje, where he lives to this day.

            Georgi has been active all his life working for the Macedonian cause. He spent nearly four decades in various socio-political functions. He was active in the Skopje folk song and dance ensemble "Gotse Delchev" and in the "Bapchorki" group of singers. He was also an organizer of the cultural and historic international event "Pesna za Gotse".

            As Secretary General of the Association of Refugee Children from the Aegean part of Macedonia, Georgi was instrumental in organizing various international meetings and gatherings for refugee children. The first meeting, which took place in 1988, was a wakeup call for the Greek authorities who up to this point had completely ignored the rights of Macedonians, especially the rights of the refugee children who were all born in Greece. As Georgi puts it, "Where else but in Greece is a twelve year old child held accountable for the crimes of his parents?" Georgi's parents fought on the Partisan side during the Greek Civil War, which was considered a crime against the Greek State. Even though these crimes were pardoned for the Greek Partisans (Greek by genus) in 1985 (legal act 1540/85) they have yet to be pardoned for the Macedonians. Greece still has antiquated but active laws that discriminate against the Macedonians.
            Makedoncite se borat
            za svoite pravdini!

            "The one who works for joining of Macedonia to Bulgaria,Greece or Serbia can consider himself as a good Bulgarian, Greek or Serb, but not a good Macedonian"
            - Goce Delchev

            Comment

            • Serdarot
              Member
              • Feb 2010
              • 605

              #7
              there is so much writen and said about this subject... beside the mentioned locations, many Macedonians were sent to "death camps" accros Sibiria...

              try find and read this book:



              greetings
              Bratot:
              Никој не е вечен, а каузава не е нова само е адаптирана на новите услови и ќе се пренесува и понатаму.

              Comment

              • Makedonetz
                Senior Member
                • Apr 2010
                • 1080

                #8
                Serdarot very true if we can find some information even from the past posted here in the MTO on this subject that would be great, as id like to learn what my mothers family played in their roles during the civil war. Thanks for the book ill be reading up on it Spolaj ti

                Another good book is if interested

                Makedoncite se borat
                za svoite pravdini!

                "The one who works for joining of Macedonia to Bulgaria,Greece or Serbia can consider himself as a good Bulgarian, Greek or Serb, but not a good Macedonian"
                - Goce Delchev

                Comment

                • La Bira
                  Banned
                  • Nov 2011
                  • 36

                  #9
                  An uplifting scene from Psyche Vathia (by Pantelis Voulgaris), the latest major film on the Civil War. It describes the final stage of the communist defeat on the Gramos-Vitsi front. I saw it recently, there are a few problems, but it was generally very good and I'm quite satisfied by it.

                  Ψυχή Βαθιά - Ο Αντάρτικος Χορός - YouTube

                  Comment

                  • Risto the Great
                    Senior Member
                    • Sep 2008
                    • 15658

                    #10
                    The music is lovely.
                    I hope nobody walked away thinking the puscheno was a Greek dance though.

                    Difficult to say much more about that 2 minutes clip.
                    What were the problems you identified La Bira?
                    Risto the Great
                    MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA
                    "Holding my breath for the revolution."

                    Hey, I wrote a bestseller. Check it out: www.ren-shen.com

                    Comment

                    • julie
                      Senior Member
                      • May 2009
                      • 3869

                      #11
                      I had the pleasure of meeting with George Donevski in Bitola, a wonderful soul, he works with Vujce Alexander Popovski who formed Association of Refugee Children from the Aegean part of Macedonia.

                      Alexander Popovski, from Dolno Kotori, Lerinsko, was one of the very young partisans who fought for a liberated and united Macedonia , Vicho planina and Gramos.
                      Vasilka was one of the female partisans from Kostur, and they were sent to Tashkent in Russia at the end of the civil war. The Russians educated them and they finished with University degrees , and they both speak highly of the kindness shown to them by the Russians. It was not a case of not intermarrying, the displaced Macedonians tended to stick together, they fell in love and married and their daughter Mira was born in Tashkent.
                      Neither of them were able to return to their homes in Aegean Macedonia, as we know how the Greeks denied those Macedonians from the Aegean. It was not until 1965 the young family returned to selo Bistrica, close proximity to Bitola, where dedo had fled under gunfire when he escaped his planned beheading.
                      "The moral revolution - the revolution of the mind, heart and soul of an enslaved people, is our greatest task."__________________Gotse Delchev

                      Comment

                      • julie
                        Senior Member
                        • May 2009
                        • 3869

                        #12
                        Assoc of Macedonians from Aegean Macedonia - Bitola
                        zdruzhenie na makedonskiot del na makedonia - Bitola

                        st. Vasko Karangelevski bb,
                        "Hotel Bitola" 7000 Bitola
                        Republic of Macedonia
                        phone/fax 389 47 255-618

                        email [email protected]

                        Stopanska banka od Bitola
                        Acc no. 04-701-0001163 mbr 4193750


                        This is an organisation run by a very small group of volunteers, George Donevski and Alexander Popovski run it, they asked whether there would be anyone interested in donating to assist with costs in utility bills, admin costs such as photocopying etc, they started the annual detsati begaltsi reunions in Bitola.

                        Any contribution, no matter how small is greatly appreciated.
                        "The moral revolution - the revolution of the mind, heart and soul of an enslaved people, is our greatest task."__________________Gotse Delchev

                        Comment

                        • Daskalot
                          Senior Member
                          • Sep 2008
                          • 4345

                          #13
                          Originally posted by La Bira View Post
                          An uplifting scene from Psyche Vathia (by Pantelis Voulgaris), the latest major film on the Civil War. It describes the final stage of the communist defeat on the Gramos-Vitsi front. I saw it recently, there are a few problems, but it was generally very good and I'm quite satisfied by it.

                          Ψυχή Βαθιά - Ο Αντάρτικος Χορός - YouTube
                          Welcome to the forum La Bira!
                          Could you please tell us what was so good about it?
                          Macedonian Truth Organisation

                          Comment

                          • julie
                            Senior Member
                            • May 2009
                            • 3869

                            #14
                            La Bira, welcome to the forum
                            As RTG said, music and the pushcheno oro are Macedonian and awesome
                            I could not identify what was good about it either
                            "The moral revolution - the revolution of the mind, heart and soul of an enslaved people, is our greatest task."__________________Gotse Delchev

                            Comment

                            • Daskalot
                              Senior Member
                              • Sep 2008
                              • 4345

                              #15
                              Most Macedonians joined the Communist forces in the Greek civil war because they promised them a free Macedonia and rights.
                              La Bira are you Greek?
                              Macedonian Truth Organisation

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X